Meaning

Don Quixote. Great novel!  It is the story of a 50-year-old man who goes crazy reading adventure stories about chivalry and knights in shining armor. He decides he will become a knight, gets a make-shift helmet and sword, gets on his old horse and rides around the Spanish countryside with his squire Sancho Panza seeking adventures, righting wrongs, and saving damsels in distress. Everyone knows he is completely crazy – he thinks windmills are giants to be slayed. But then he says the most wonderful things.

Don Quixote got me thinking about what great missions I might accomplish in the rest of my life. It inspired me to start a blog about the fictional adventures of Bijonbo — my childhood nickname — a heroic, fictional version of me!

Then I changed course and started posting my Toastmasters speeches in my blog:

1. Wise-Elder-In-Training -- 9/28/2016

In the first Toastmasters speech – The Icebreaker – I explained that my goal was not only to improve my public speaking skills, but I have a special goal in mind. I want to practice talking about the things I've learned so I can help people. So I can give counsel. So I can become a wise elder someday. But I am not a wise elder yet. I am a wise-elder-in-training.

I wrote all of the next three speeches over Christmas break that year. They cover some interpersonal counseling skills I’ve been learning.

2. Turn Conflict into Creativity -- 1/19/2017

3. Non-Violent Communication -- 2/9/2017

4. Motivational Interviewing -- 4/20/2017

The gist of motivational interviewing is you can’t motivate someone else but you can help them find their own motivation.

5. Investing Lessons -- 7/13/2017

Then I turned to a practical topic – Investing – based on advice I give to my sons. Buy and hold index funds!

6. Wisdom in The Axial Age -- 9/28/2017

Next I explored wisdom from the ancients – Socrates, Confucius, and The Buddha.

7. Vendor Tooling Audit -- 10/26/2017

Then I did a work-related speech as practice for making clear business presentations.

8. Shaky Hands -- 2/8/2018

Next I brought my guitar to show how I overcome shaky hands when performing or public speaking.

9. Truth -- 5/10/2018

I sent a link to this speech about Truth to the authors of the Pro-Truth Pledge and the Baloney Detection Kit. I asked them to share the link in their social media, which they both did. As a result, this blog post got over 1200 views – which is 12X my previous record!

10. Meaning -- 6/7/2018

At long last, this is my 10th and final Toastmasters speech in the Competent Communication manual – and the assignment is to inspire the audience. Now I could give a pre-game pep talk, but it is hard to inspire other people. The enthusiasm doesn’t last. But I can show you, through my examples, how to build and maintain motivation over a life full of meaning. And to see if they same approach will inspire you.

Thinking about what motivates me reminds me of a paper I wrote in 2007 during my first year in Vanderbilt University's masters degree program. The title was “Work Ethic: How to Enjoy Your Job (Even If Your Boss is a Jerk!)” Now please understand that I am not talking about anyone at my current employer! I worked for another employer at the time and the bosses in question are retired and out of the workforce.

Over the years I've developed a secret point of view that motivates me when work gets frustrating or dull or when my boss acts like a jerk. My secret is to view work as my contribution to society. A vital step is to identify exactly how it makes the world a better place. This gives our day-to day tasks more meaning. For some, it’s obvious. I have a friend who was a nurse at a hospital delivery room.  She gets an immediate, first-hand sense of gratification from helping mothers deliver babies.  But in our complex economy, it may not be so easy.  For example, my work in Purchasing is a few steps removed from the end customer. Yet I can see that my work is part of a system that makes products that meet people’s needs. We negotiate lower prices and control costs with suppliers and, in so doing, we work on behalf of our customers who demand a good value when they buy our products. Now if I took the approach that I am negotiating lower prices to make more profit for my company, it would put me at odds with the supplier who seeks profit through higher prices.  But if we both approach the negotiation as together seeking ways to make products at lower cost, then we both win because we are part of a supply chain that meets the needs of more and more customers.

I’m viewing this 10th speech as a capstone project, bringing together themes from all my speeches. It is like my capstone project at Vanderbilt where I wrote my own personal creed. It was a 45-page research paper and I gave an oral defense in front of 3 professors. I won’t cover all the creed statements today except the first and last one: I Value Authenticity – what you see is what you get. And: I believe these statements are provisional and subject to improvement as understanding advances and circumstances change. That’s so I don’t get set in my ways and dogmatic. So far in 7 years I haven’t made any changes … until today!

I’ve learned a few things since then. As Michael Shermer said in his 2015 book The Moral Arc “we can judge actions as right or wrong” by asking “do they increase or decrease the survival and flourishing of individual sentient beings?” You see, across the indifferent universe - life is scarce and precious. There may be some bacteria here and there but intelligent life is rare and amazing. We have the ability to ponder our evolutionary origins, our futures, and the meaning of life.  If the survival and flourishing of life is our guide, then the meaning of life is the furthering of life itself. So I am adding that thought to my creed.

We hear a lot about follow your dreams and find your passion. But it always seemed like something was missing -- until I found this chart that pulls it all together.

 

Do what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. At the intersection of these is your IKIGAI – a Japanese idea that translates, roughly, to life purpose, reason for being, or raison d'être in French. Now we all might not be lucky enough for our career to meet all 4 of these categories, so we might consider adding other projects. That’s why singer-songwriters wait tables in Nashville. In my case, I supplement my professional career by playing in a hobby rock-&-roll band (what I love) and I do volunteer work where I help people overcome addictions and irrational beliefs (what the world needs). So I added “IKIGAI” to my creed and now my updated creed looks like this:

My Creed, 2011 – (2018 updates in red)

• I value authenticity.
• I believe in protecting and promoting civil liberties both personal and economic.
• I believe choosing action that furthers the survival, flourishing, and evolution of sentient beings is a useful ethical guideline.
• I believe the evolution of cooperation is the source of morality. 
• I believe tit-for-tat (cooperate, retaliate, and forgive), which in game theory is the winningest strategy in iterative prisoners dilemma, is useful in everyday life. Fool me, once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.  
• I believe in education and life-long learning.
• I believe in the sciences, including physical and social sciences, as our best means of improving the human condition.
• I believe free markets, as emergent complex adaptive systems, are our best means of allocating resources.
• I believe in a limited, transparent government whose only role is to defend civil liberties, protect property rights, and mitigate unwanted market externalities.
• I believe in global free trade in goods, services, and information. To trade is to wage peace.
• I believe in getting into the Flow of life, work, and play, focusing attention on what matters most while staying open to the adjacent possible and connecting the dots.
• I believe in creating art and appreciating beauty.
• I believe in treating others with respect and kindness.
• I believe life’s purpose (IKIGAI) can be found at the intersection of doing what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.
• I believe these statements are provisional and subject to improvement as understanding advances and circumstances change.

In conclusion, inspiring you with a motivational speech might not be my strong suit. Instead, you can see how I deliberately built a personal philosophy to maintain motivation and to live a life of purpose over the long haul. You see - the meaning of life is the meaning you make. So instead of a pep-talk for inspiration I leave you with this song inspired by Don Quixote…

The Impossible Dream
To dream ... the impossible dream ...

To fight ... the unbeatable foe ...

To bear ... with unbearable sorrow ...

To run ... where the brave dare not go ...

To right ... the unrightable wrong ...

To love ... pure and chaste from afar ...

To try ... when your arms are too weary ...

To reach ... the unreachable star ...

This is my quest, to follow that star ...

No matter how hopeless, no matter how far ...

To fight for the right, without question or pause ...

To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause ...

And I know if I'll only be true, to this glorious quest,

That my heart will lie peaceful and calm,

when I'm laid to my rest ...

And the world will be better for this:

That one man, scorned and covered with scars,

Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,

To reach ... the unreachable star ...

-- from 1964 play and 1972 film: Man of La Mancha (aka Don Quixote)

Truth

“We have taller buildings but shorter tempers;
wider freeways but narrower viewpoints;
we spend more but have less;
we buy more but enjoy it less;
we have bigger houses and smaller families;
more conveniences yet less time;
we have more degrees but less sense;
more knowledge but less judgement;
more experts yet more problems.” And so on.

“Isn’t it amazing that comedian George Carlin could write something so very eloquent… and so very appropriate? His wife had recently died. What a difference a sad event makes in someone’s life.”

The full essay and those comments were posted on websites, shared with chain emails (remember those?), and later made the rounds on social media. I first saw it when a friend posted it on Facebook. Now, I know George Carlin’s humor and it just didn’t sound like something he would say. So I checked into it and sure enough – it’s a hoax. Carlin did not write it. It was written in 1995 by a pastor named Dr. Bob Moorehead. I told my friend it wasn’t Carlin and suggested she take it down, which she did. But a year later, she posted it again – I guess she really liked that essay! I had to remind her that we had been around this block before. Then last year I found the Pro-Truth Pledge. I looked into it, took the pledge, and sent it to my friend. She took the pledge too. Now she makes sure what she posts is true and it has become a discussion topic between us. I will get back to the Pro-Truth Pledge in a minute, but first let’s get our arms around the problem.

A recent study of Twitter data from 2006 to 2017 found that “Falsehood diffused significantly farther and faster than the truth … especially false political news … false news was more novel than true news, so people were more likely to share novel information…. robots spread true and false news at the same rate, so the problem is with humans, not robots. [paraphrased]”

You see, we are all are a bunch of liars. White lies, half-truths, and tall tales are everywhere. When someone asks how we are doing, we say “fine” even when you’re not.  What do you say when your wife asks if her dress makes her look fat? Tell the truth? No way! Has anyone seen Jim Carey’s movie Liar Liar? It shows how everything falls apart when his son makes a wish that his dad, who is a lawyer, cannot lie. Entire episodes of sitcoms are often based on someone covering up a lie.

What is a lie, exactly? To lie is to say something other than what you think is true. It is to know what is true, or at least think you know, and then to intentionally say something different to achieve some goal. We naturally try to avoid telling lies, but sometimes we will lie if we think the benefit of achieving the goal outweighs the cost of the lie.

And then we have bullshit. That’s right, I said it. There really is no better word to describe it. As philosopher Harry Frankfurt explains in his 2005 book titled On Bullshit, "One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share." But what is bullshit exactly? To bullshit is to say something without regard for whether it is true or not to achieve a goal that is unrelated to the truth of what you are saying. Bullshit often emerges when we are expected to say more about a subject than we actually know.

What can we, you and me, do about the spread of lies, bullshit, and false news? One step is to take the Pro-Truth Pledge:

Share Truth

• Verify: fact-check information to confirm it is true before accepting and sharing it
• Balance: share the whole truth, even if some aspects do no support my opinion
• Cite: share my sources so that others can verify my information
• Clarify: distinguish between my opinion and the facts

Honor Truth

• Acknowledge when others share true information even when we disagree otherwise
• Reevaluate if my information is challenged, retract it if I cannot verify it
• Defend others when they come under attack for sharing true information, even when we disagree otherwise
• Align my opinions and my actions with true information

Encourage Truth

• Fix: ask people to retract information that reliable sources have disproved even when they are my allies
• Educate: compassionately inform those around me to stop using unreliable sources, even if these sources support my opinion
• Defer: recognize the opinions of experts as more likely to be accurate when the facts are disputed
• Celebrate those who retract incorrect statements and update their beliefs toward the truth

To verify claims and information we can check websites like factchecker.com, truthorfiction.com, hoax-slayer.net, and snopes.com. Or Google it or look it up in Wikipedia.

We can join organizations like The Skeptics Society which promotes scientific skepticism and fights the spread of pseudoscience, superstition, and irrational beliefs. They published a Baloney Detection Kit:

1. How reliable is the source of the claim?
2. Does the source make similar claims?
3. Have the claims been verified by somebody else?
4. Does this fit with the way the world works?
5. Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?
6. Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
7. Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
8. Does verifiable evidence exist?
9. Does the new explanation account for as many phenomena as the old explanation did?
10. Are personal beliefs driving the claim?

You can apply the Pro-Truth Pledge and the Baloney Detection Kit at work. A useful phrase is “what evidence justifies your claim?” When in doubt, check it out!

So go online and take the Pro-Truth Pledge. Post it in your office. Use the Baloney Detection Kit. Make sure what you say is true and what you share online is true. Ask for evidence to justify claims. And most of all – set yourself apart – and be a truth-teller.

*********************

Pro-Truth Pledge       https://www.protruthpledge.org/        

The Spread of True and False News Online http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146

FactCheck                   https://www.factcheck.org/ 

TruthOrFiction            http://www.truthorfiction.com/

Hoax-Slayer                 https://www.hoax-slayer.net/ 

Snopes                         https://www.snopes.com/  

The Skeptics Society  https://www.skeptic.com/ 

Baloney Detection Kit - by Michael Shermer, term coined by Carl Sagan
https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/03/16/baloney-detection-kit/

Shaky Hands

I didn’t know I had shaky hands until junior high speech class when I gave a speech with a piece of paper in my hand. I was horrified as my hands shook so much I couldn’t read it. For the next assignment I lip-synched Paul Simon’s Love Me Like a Rock.  It went so well that my teacher asked me to perform at the Christmas pageant. The pageant was called Country Christmas based on the TV show Hee Haw. One thing led to another and I found myself donning an all-white outfit, pasting on black sideburns, and doing an Elvis impersonation to the song Santa Bring My Baby Back to Me. The speech teacher told the girls that were gathered around me on stage to start screaming. Before you know it, the girls and moms in the audience started screaming too and the whole gymnasium was a rockin’! Well it all went straight to my head. The quarterback’s girlfriend broke up with him to go steady with me. That lasted 2 weeks and fell apart over Christmas break.

Another time, very early in my career when I worked at GM SATURN, I had the opportunity to give a presentation to the President of SATURN, whose name was Skip LeFauve. I knew enough not to drink a caffeinated drink that morning but right before the presentation I drank a Sprite instead. The sugar rush kicked in and once again my hands were shaking like crazy as I spoke. Very embarrassing. What saved me was a clever idea. The topic of the presentation was a plan to get suppliers to cover warranty costs for any defective parts they shipped to SATURN. We called it Supplier Kwality (with a “K”) Incentive Program – or SKIP for short! We named it after the President Skip LeFauve and he had no choice but to give it a thumbs up!

Joining Toastmasters gives me opportunities to overcome shaky hands. My hands shake all the time but they definitely shake more when I do public speaking. I’ve learned caffeine, sugar, and alcohol give me the shakes – and sadly those are 3 of my favorite things. An empty stomach makes it worse. But I’ve found that eating protein settles me back down, so I make sure I eat protein before these lunchtime meetings.  I never hold a piece of paper when I speak – instead I hold the paper against a book or folder. Taking a drink of water during a speech is not a good idea. I might stay behind the podium too. I know that is frowned upon at Toastmasters but we should embrace neurodiversity. Nervous people are people too!  Yes my hands shake, that’s the way my excitement comes out. But I think my thinking is clear and my voice is OK. I sometimes wonder how other people’s judgement of my shaky hands has impacted me in job interviews, presentations, and in social settings.

I love to play guitar -- which doesn't pair well with shaky hands. They are not a problem when practicing alone at my house. But when I play in front of an audience I have to overcome it. I play in a hobby rock-n-roll band called the Hang Dog Daddies. We are a bunch of old guys who still like to rock. My hands shake for the first few songs so I try to stick with strumming chords rather than picking solos. In fact, my shaky hands realistically prevent me from ever becoming a lead guitarist, so I mostly stick to rhythm guitar. Our band has had the honor of playing at 4 Nashville Predators hockey games over the years. You may have seen the bands that play at intermissions. Well that’s in front of 15,000 people. Now most of them are getting their hotdogs and beer and are not really paying attention to the band. But still maybe a 1,000 people are actually watching and listening, so it takes courage! Especially that time the band talked me into singing Folsum Prison Blues by Johnny Cash right there at Bridgestone Arena, next to the Country Music Hall of Fame, across from Ryman Auditorium and Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge on Lower Broad. So I held onto the guitar neck with a strong grip, clamped my arm down on the body of the guitar, held on tight, and gave it my best. Despite my fears it went without a hitch.

So that’s what I do to overcome shaky hands. Everyone has different characteristics.  Some are advantages, some are disadvantages, and some are just differences. In the greater scheme of things, my shaky hands are a minor inconvenience compared to hardships other people face. The key is to do whatever it takes to overcome those hardships, to capitalize on your strengths, and to meet whatever challenges you face. So get up and sing your song or make that speech or volunteer for table topics. Whatever it is, just do it!